LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, January 19, 2000

Damage to Bay Area fisheries from mining, water diversion A story about mercury contamination in Tomales Bay ("Tainted Tomales," Jan. 9) quotes Environmental Protection Agency officials congratulating themselves for preventing damage to the bay's important oyster crop. However, it also reports that wildlife in Tomales Bay is already contaminated with mercury, and indicates that the reason commercial oysterbeds remain uncontaminated is that they are raised on platforms above the bay's bottom where the mercury collects.

So the commercial oysters are protected by the way they are grown, not by EPA actions.

The statements of state and federal officials about Tomales Bay being an important fishery to protect from contamination are also contradicted by the length of time it took for them to take action. The problem was discovered years ago, but the cleanup was funded only this year.

Despite these contradictions, the article provides an eye-opening account of how industry avoids accountability for environmental contamination, and how the cost of cleanup often falls to taxpayers rather than to the polluting companies.

The mercury mine that caused the problem agreed to pay $128,000, a minuscule amount compared to the cost to taxpayers of the cleanup.

It's good that the EPA is now cleaning up that mine, but why do we allow companies to foist their cleanup expenses off on us?

Even more eye-opening are the story's revelations about the amount of mercury poisoning in the larger San Francisco Bay: 460 pounds a year from the Central Valley, 71 pounds a year from Bay Area businesses. This is allowed? People catch and eat fish and crabs from San Francisco Bay!

A Scripps-McClatchy News Service article "Sinking islands imperil water" (Jan. 9) at one point refers to "the federal and state water project pumps" in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that "supply 20 million Californians with drinking water." Later it says "the Delta is now most important to the state as a spigot from which two-thirds of its population and 4.5 million acres of its farmland get water."

Actually, half of the water arriving in the Delta is pumped south in the California Aqueduct at the rate of 5 million acre feet per year, but hardly any of it is used for drinking water. Eight and a half percent of this water goes to irrigate a comparatively small acreage in the desert of the extreme southern Central Valley, most of it to grow surplus crops like cotton. Only 11 percent of this water ever gets pumped over the Tehachapi Mountains and into the Los Angeles region.

The California Aqueduct's contributions to the water needs of the Los Angeles area are minuscule, and its contributions to agriculture weigh comparatively lightly in the balance of California agriculture as a whole.

Making the desert bloom may seem like a worthy objective, but in this case it comes at the expense of the death of something else. By preventing half the water that is supposed to flow into San Francisco Bay from ever reaching the Bay, the pumps in the Delta are one of the four major factors killing San Francisco Bay fisheries, as they have been doing for the past half century.

The other major causes of damage to the fisheries are millions of gallons of toxins dumped into the Bay by industry (mostly with permits issued by public agencies); agricultural run-off contaminated with fertilizers and pesticides, both legal and illegal, and petrochemical run-off from city streets.

In your editorial "Not holier than thou" (Jan. 7) you wrote of Sen. John McCain, "We need someone in the Oval Office with McCain's professed ideals, but not with his apparent propensity to perform favors for financial backers."

Unfortunately, it is not possible for a politician who is not wealthy to be successful in American politics without pandering to campaign contributors who are.

McCain wants to clean up campaign financing because he resents being dirtied by it. Most Republican politicians support our system of legalized bribery for two reasons: They benefit from it, and it gives the plutocracy leverage over democratic choices.

If I had to choose between doctors who smoked cigarettes I would prefer one who condemned the consumption of tobacco to one who recommended it as a medicinal herb.

As I was quoted in the article "City leaders draws up a wish list for Mayor Brown's second term" (Metro section, Jan. 9) my points were not clear.

Several factors in the rent control laws in this city tend to push rents up. Owners are allowed to raise the rent on a sitting tenant only 60 percent of the consumer price index. Adjusted for inflation, this constitutes a rent decrease each year. Given this situation, owners try to get top dollar up front when a unit is vacant because they do not know when or if they will have another vacancy in that unit.

In non-rent-controlled markets an owner may offer units at lower initial rents to attract good tenants, and base future increases on both inflation and the quality of one's tenants. If you have good tenants, you keep the rents reasonable to retain them. The San Francisco rent control Law effectively kills this practice.

Units are kept off the market for a variety of reasons, such as small owners keeping units vacant out of fear and exasperation at the myriad of rules and laws governing not only rents but evictions and services. Many units with low rents that are being used as second homes, for weekend getaway, by people who live outside The City. This is clearly an abuse of the rent laws - thousands of units are kept off the market in this way.

While repeal of rent control is not in the cards, I hope a study of its effects will allow for some changes to curb these kinds of abuses of the law and make it more even-handed toward owners. After all, if we are going to address the housing crisis, The City needs to work with, not against, the owners and providers of rental housing.

How sad it is to learn of The City's Commission of Animal Control and Welfare voting to ban rodeo events like calf-roping and steer-wrestling and the use of cattle prods. The claim of cruelty to animals is very wrong.

It is no different to rope a calf than to catch a trout on a hook, nor is steer-wrestling different from wrestling with your dog on the front lawn. A cattle prod is the same as using an electric collar to train your dog.

A commissioner's claim of rodeo animals not being willing participants is short-sighted. Fish in rivers and lakes are not willing participants in being caught, nor are elephants and lions in a circus, nor the animals held captive in a zoo.

If the commission really believes that rodeo animals are treated cruelly, then we might as well say good-bye to many of our other Western traditions. In addition to not being able to take your kids to the rodeo, you will be banned from teaching your kid how to fish. Circus acts with animals will be no more, and training your dog with a choke chain will be outlawed as well.

I hope the Board of Supervisors will preserve our Western culture by voting down the commission's recommendation.

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Scott C. Kennedy

Redwood City &lt;

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